Page 38 of They Call Me Blue

“In Starra’lee, the command hierarchy might seem straightforward: squadmate, squad leader, region commander, and general. Little do our soldiers know that their orders come from the High Priestess Supreme. Perhaps if they did, they would know to fear her more than anyone else.”

—Clara of Ashwood, Former Starra’lee Priestess

Lost journal entry

“ Y ou have to talk to me at some point,” I say, brushing aside the sawgrass reeds blocking Shoulder Squish Cave. My two squadmates remain silent behind me. Dejected. Bitter that I didn’t warn them of my plan.

Fucking babies.

“You would have screwed it up if you’d known.” I mutter the words before I can think them through. Cheevy storms in front of me, blocking my path to the cave. His fingers curl into fists.

“You know what your problem is, Arden?” he spits. “You don’t know how to work as a team. You go off and do your own shit without thinking about how it’ll affect the rest of us. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“For . . .?”

He grinds his teeth together. “For saving your Marr-damn life. Or have you forgotten that Hunter would have stabbed you in the chest if I hadn’t pulled you down?”

I did forget. With Lyrick puppeteering me, the whole fight is a bit of a blur, but it’s not as if I can tell Cheevy that.

This soft, squishy feeling wraps around my chest at the realization that not one, but two people saved me today without having any reason to—with having every reason not to.

When I swallow, it’s like swallowing tree bark. “You’re right. Thank you.”

He huffs in response and wriggles through the cave entrance, sucking in his gut to do so.

I follow closely behind, as does Chest Wound.

Inside, everything is impossibly dark. Too dark for an elf without darkeyes, which only Chest Wound possesses.

On muscle memory, I tiptoe across moist, jagged rocks, avoiding the stalagmites and stalactites to reach the far side of the chamber.

I fumble for a swinging chain I hung from the ceiling years ago, then for the glass and metal lantern fixed to it.

A matchbox sticks to the bottom, attached by pine glue.

A bright spark of orange. An acrid, smoky odor as I remove a match and ignite it, lighting up a kerosene lantern—an elgrew lantern—normally banned from Starra’lee bunkers. Unlike the others, though, I don’t care where my stuff comes from. I care about efficiency.

Pale light exposes an entire depot’s worth of weapons, armor, food, and inventions that Mom and Dad taught me to make when I was young.

Green-glass goggles. Cuirasses, gloves, and vambraces woven from sawgrass reeds.

Daggers and swords. Pointed bows carved from spine trees, and red, poison-tipped arrows crafted from the teeth I pried off elgrew corpses.

But even more important than all that are the explosives I smuggled out of Starra’lee. The key to completing our plan.

“Holy shit.” Cheevy whistles low, taking everything in.

I feel this strange urge to defend myself. Back stiffening, I cross my arms and narrow my gaze at him. “The last time I trusted someone, I ended up getting poisoned and left behind. This was insurance in case it happened again.”

“Gods, you’re such a fucking psychopath,” he says. “And I love you for that.”

I roll my eyes at him. “Grab what you need and let’s go. We’ve lost enough time already.”

Grinning, he steps up to my arsenal and begins touching everything, trailing his fingers across row after row of equipment sprawled along the floor.

“You’ve been holding out on us,” he says, unscrewing a bronze jar filled with yellow paste—a topical analgesic meant to remove the sting from burns.

“I didn’t know Clara taught you how to make this. We’ve been going without for years.”

Clara. My mom.

He sniffs the waxy mixture, unaware of what he’s said.

The hairs rise on the back of my neck as I try—and fail—to think of a reason he would know her name, would know she was an inventor, would have used a paste she invented.

Not once have I ever spoken that word aloud—not even to Giara.

“You knew my mom?” I ask, eyebrow raised.

Cheevy doesn’t glance up from his sifting, but he does pause, his fingers hovering over a jar of fruit preserves. “Barely,” he says. “She left Starra’lee around the time I joined. Took all her notes with her. Really pissed Elder Risha off.”

“And none of you told me?” I don’t try to hide the accusation in my tone. Across the cave, Chest Wound bites his fingernails to the quick, as if he’s also been let in on this little secret. “Did Giara know?”

Cheevy shrugs. “I couldn’t say. Giara wasn’t exactly chatty with the rest of us.” Snatching a bag off the floor, he shoves the yellow paste and jarred fruit inside. Then he moves on to weapons, as if putting this conversation past him, but I’m not about to let it go.

“What about Julian?”

“This isn’t some grand conspiracy, Arden.” Cheevy sighs—loudly. “A lot of us knew them—or knew about them—but we shun traitors who go topside. You know that. Speaking about them is forbidden.”

His movements are more forceful as he grabs a bandolier and straps it across his chest, sheathing daggers through the leather loops.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m being paranoid.

As a rule, we don’t mention the elves who go topside and decide it’s more important to start a family than to fight.

But this nagging voice in the back of my head can’t help but feel . . . hurt? Betrayed? Lied to?

I shake the feelings aside— for now . Once our mission is finished and I’m back at Starra’lee headquarters, I’ll confront Julian about it, but until then .

. . I snatch an empty go-bag off the floor and follow in Cheevy’s footsteps, grabbing equipment and tossing it inside.

Then, I motion for Chest Wound to do the same.

“What’s this?” Two rows from me, he plucks a fuzzy, rolled up blanket from the floor. Glass clinks inside it, and a wave of panicked nausea washes over me.

“Don’t touch that!” I rush to Chest Wound, jumping over a pile of armor.

Sweat dampens my palms. My heart roars so loudly, I can’t hear anything over it.

Snatching the blanket from him, I hug it tightly to my chest and breathe, slowly, deeply, inhaling the musky, loamy scent that marks us as safe.

No sharp chemical odors. No dribbling liquid.

Marr-damn, that could have been awful.

My arms and legs tremble and my fingers lock protectively over the explosives cache. It takes a moment to stabilize my breathing, and by the time I do, my squadmates are staring at me like I’ve grown a third arm.

“Firecaps,” I whisper in way of explanation, lowering myself to the hard stone.

The projectiles clink together—albeit less dramatically—as I unfurl their protective cover and smooth it over the damp limestone.

Dozens of round glass disks glimmer in the lantern light—the right halves filled with pink liquid, the left with something that resembles piss.

A thin divider with a glass pull tab keeps the two sides separated.

Chest Wound leans over me, staring in fascination at the little disks. “What do they do?”

“Go boom,” I say, imitating the sound. “Pull the tab and throw. When the liquids mix, you have about ten seconds before shit gets bad. It’s not a big explosion”— unless you have a bag full of them —“but it’ll light them up.”

“We try not to use them in the field,” Cheevy adds. “The noise lures in more elgrew than the firecaps kill. But if you’re already in an unwinnable situation, it’s nice to take some of those assholes out with you.”

Before I can stop him, Chest Wound snatches up a firecap and holds it to the swinging lantern, examining it with one eye open. “That’s so fucking cool.”

“Thanks.” Cheevy grins. “It’s one of my better inventions.”

Jumping to my feet, I pluck the glass disk from Chest Wound’s fingers and pocket it.

Then, I roll the blanket back up and tuck it deep within my bag, where the new guy can’t access it without explicit permission.

Last thing we need is some untrained, clumsy asshole fucking everything up.

“Enough chatting. Grab what you need and let’s go.

We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before sunset. ”

I take my own advice and finish loading up, ignoring the “you’re no fun” looks the guys keep giving me. I don’t need to be fun; I need to be pragmatic.

And if we don’t hurry, this whole plan falls apart.

Tightening the straps on my shoulder, I wedge my fat, overstuffed go-bag between the rocks and exit the cave, listening with my sezin for any unusual sounds.

Itchy vibrations travel through my inner ears, the noises of the forest amplifying.

No thudding footsteps or purring cats. For the first time in hours—maybe days—we’re free of the elgrew chasing us.

So why can’t I shake the feeling of us being watched?